An electrostatic discharge (ESD) event is a sudden flow of electricity between two circuits that is caused by contact, an electrical short, or breakdown. An ESD event can occur at a pin of an integrated circuit when the integrated circuit is handled by a person or machine. An ESD event can cause damage to, and possibly the failure of, an integrated circuit. An integrated circuit that contains field-effect transistors (FETs) having thin gate oxide regions cannot tolerate high gate voltages. If the integrated circuit experiences a high voltage ESD event at one of its input pins, the field-effect transistors in the input buffer coupled to that input pin may experience breakdown.